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Mo fuggin Riku. What can I say? He’s probably one of the most fun generals to build a deck around. This guy doesn’t have one, but two reflections! What a beast! And if you have the oversized foil version of him you can see your own reflection in the card! That’s a f*** ton of reflections! And what does he do while he stands there holding some fire like a boss? Doubles your investments! He’s like the best stock broker in the multiverse! And if you abuse his power of doubling stuff, he still doesn’t give a f***! This is my kind of general!
The different angles and deck strategies a Riku deck can take are nearly endless. The route I chose to take was cantrip and value creatures. With a cantrip creature already providing some sort of advantage in a body and a comes into play ability, the potential to double that is awesome. Add in the chance to be able to cheat the creature into play and you have gained a massive amount of value out of your mana.
The deck I aimed to build was a smorgasboard of creatures with everything that these three colors had to offer. Green offers mana fixing and removal in the form of Viridian Emissary, Acidic Slime, Indrik Stomphowler, Brutalizer Exarch, and Wickerbough Elder. Blue offers card draw, bounce and copying abilities which come in extremely handy in the forms of Mulldrifter, Sea Gate Oracle, Aethersnipe, Riftwing Cloudskate, Cryptoplasm and good ol’ Clone. Red rounds off the pack with some land destruction, burn and creature thievery in the forms of Ravenous Baboons, Avalanche Riders, Flametongue Kavu, Siege-Gang Commander, and Conquering Manticore. Understandably there are better choices for some of these ability slots, but I did very little trading and no card buying to put this together and the deck still ended up being extremely fun to play.
Let’s dip into some of the spells. For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been a fan of death metal for quite some time. With that being said I had to have a way to give my opponents a hammer smashed face. BAM! Hammer of Bogardan. This card takes me back to the good ol’ days! I remember pulling one of these from a Mirage booster pack and being like, “WHAAAAAT!?” It just keeps coming back! Get smashed on, opponent who keeps flicking his cards in his hand. Cut that sh** out! Some other spells that keep coming back are Red Sun’s Zenith, Beacon of Destruction and Spitting Image. Gotta love that value. Another awesome spell that’s always a joy to copy is Electrolyze. It’s a Pyrotechnics at instant speed that draws you 2 cards! Beast. And who doesn’t like to double Brainstorm eot? Scrubs, that’s who.
Sometimes your opponents have more money that they want to flaunt in your face with expensive cards. With this deck you can tell them to straight eat a dick by copying that sh** for yourself! That’s a nice spell, Reiterate with buyback, copy Reiterate. Hey, that legendary creature is kind of a pain in the ass. How about I play a Spitting Image on my Clone, copy the Spitting Image, legend rule your dude away and get some value out of some other awesome creature on the board with my second Clone token? Sounds like a plan. Oh no, you’ve declared your Blightsteel Colossus and Akroma, Angel of Wrath as attackers! Double mutha fu**in’ Snakeform! Now you gotta watch your two creatures die into my blockers and then draw two cards. Eat it.
Now don’t think that just because this is a fairly budget deck that it doesn’t have the power to compete with the big dogs. Let’s say your opponent is dumb enough to let you keep a Seige-Gang Commander on the board? How about you Rite of Replication with kicker copied with Riku with Parallel Lives on the board? You know what that is? 70 f***ing creatures that’s what! Wham! Alright, that’s kind of a dream scenario but you get the idea of the crazy things that this deck can do.
The whole idea of the deck is to have fun playing. Sure, the deck could be loaded with super strong cards that will win the games just by hitting the board but winning isn’t the only thing fun about playing with this deck. The amount of different interactions available with Riku are extremely vast. Maybe you want the game to have more apes so you copy a Pongify with Riku and Double Twincast it. BAM! Monkey time. Now my Treetop Village has some homeboys to talk to. The idea is to have fun and not spend a bunch of money to do so.
Hopefully you have gained a little insight on how awesome and fun Riku of Two Reflections is to play as a general in Commander. Give him a shot if you want a versatile deck with tons of options and interaction. Leave a comment with some of your ideas for some fun budget additions to a Riku deck. _
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